{"id":111,"date":"2023-11-26T11:19:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-26T10:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/?p=111"},"modified":"2025-10-28T16:09:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T15:09:14","slug":"civilian-fatality-rates-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/?p=111","title":{"rendered":"Civilian fatality rates in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Very important <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/qiMAI\">article in New York Times<\/a> concerning the civilian fatality rates in Gaza, key takeaways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The daily civilian fatality rates far exceed the fatalities during sieges and bombings of cities held by Daesh\/Islamic State.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Instead of smaller yield precision guided munition Israel has extensively used high-yield bombs (including 2,000 pound bombs)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Israel\u2019s urge to make quick advances made assessments of civilian paterns of life impossible (i.e. observing how many civilians would walk in and out from a house), hence Israel had less precise estimates for expected non-combattant harm.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>While the IDF reports that they cancelled numerous bombings because of their assessments of expected non-combattant harm using their usual procedures, these assessments are probably much more imprecise than during previous wars, and given the strategic importance of destroying underground structures and maybe other factors like the perception of the importance of the war and a changed perception of the enemy\u2019s civilian population the bar has been significantly raised for civilian harm to be considered inadmissible.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The rationale for trying to proceed quickly is probably the anticipation of growing diplomatic pressure for a ceasefire during the prolonged campaign. However, we have to question whether this strategy actually worked out well. Closest allies deplore the far too high fatalities. While territorial advances have indeed been rapid, the number of enemy combattants (Hamas, PIJ) killed seems to be modest: even according to IDF numbers only about 3.000 terrorists as of one and a half weeks ago, with still tens of thousands enemy combattants left (even if we account for casualties with might be higher than fatalities, but have not been reported by IDF sources).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The statements by weapons experts concerning the very liberal use of high-yield bombs seem to confirm that the comparison with the siege of the tiny coastal strip at Mullivaikkal by the Sri Lankan army in their final campaign against the Tamil Tigers in early 2009 has some merit: In both cases relatively imprecise weapons with high collateral damage have been used in densely populated areas where civilians were used as human shields. In the Sri Lankan case instead of high-yield bombs very imprecise mortar grenades have been used in an even more densely crowded area than northern Gaza, also because the Sri Lankan army unlike the IDF had no advanced precision-guided weapons systems available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that there is a four days ceasefire these observations should make us worry even more about what is yet to come: Hamas and PIJ might very well use the ceasefire, during which the IDF downs their observation drones, to retreat a significant amount of their fighters into the now even more crowded southern part of Gaza and their tunnel systems there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How is all this supposed to end, without opportunities of temporary evacuation from the combat zones for the vast majority of Gazans?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Very important article in New York Times concerning the civilian fatality rates in Gaza, key takeaways: The rationale for trying to proceed quickly is probably the anticipation of growing diplomatic pressure for a ceasefire during the prolonged campaign. However, we have to question whether this strategy actually worked out well. Closest allies deplore the far [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynas-on-pines.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}